Sunday, March 14, 2021
Well, my Ten-Tec knowledge base took an sudden increase the past few days — I bought the correct memory backup battery — a 2032 — for my Ten-Tec Omni V.
I installed the battery, then decided to pull the non-working speaker out of the rig (the speaker is indeed defective, I determined). Inside the Omni V, a previous owner documented the rig’s mods — and the inclusion of the N4PY chip.
The N4PY upgrade basically turns the Omni V into an Omni VI (or V.9 as N4PY calls it). One of the added features is that it allows you to make frequency corrections by band. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Omni V was 500 Hz off frequency on 40 meters, and 3 or 4 Hz off on 80. The correction feature should be able to fix that — however, I couldn’t figure out how to make the feature work.
To quote my father, “When All Else Fails, Read the Directions.”
On reading (and re-reading) the manual, I finally saw the error of my ways.
The Omni V arrived here with some homebrew labels on the keypad. I assumed they were there because the original labeling had worn away or something. However, that was not the case! The new labels were needed due to the N4PY chip upgrade.
The upgrade completely changed the functionality of the keypad, and also which button switched the radio to which ham band. For example, the original keypad had four buttons for 10 meters — 10A, 10B, etc. The N4PY upgrade only had 1 10-meter button.
The upgrade also added substantial new functions. For example, the bottom row of keypad buttons originally labeled “30”, “12” and “10D” became “ENTER,” “SHIFT,” AND “CLEAR.” And to enable the frequency correction feature, I was hitting the wrong two keys. I relabeled all the keys and then tried the feature — it worked beautifully. Now the Omni V is spot-on frequency on 80 and 40 — and it has now replaced the Paragon in Studio C.
I’ll probably wind up putting both Paragons up for sale now that I have the Omni V figured out.
Oh, I ordered a replacement speaker for the Omni V, but if I have to, I’ll remove a working speaker from one of the Paragons and ship the inoperative speaker out with a Paragon. The replacement is a little larger than the original, however, it should work ok. We’ll see.
PS-150-120 REBUILD. Tonight I started work to replace the capacitors on one of my Hallicrafter PS-150-120 power supplies that go with the SR-150/160 transceivers. I was initially confused and believed two capacitors were missing; however I soon realized that two large 80 uf electrolytics were being replaced by much smaller, modern electrolytic caps. When I remove the two large caps, it will give me room to replace the dual capacitor can mounted on the chassis. I also need to replace the power cord. Now all I can hope is that the damn transformer is ok, eh??
73 es CUL … de KY4Z …. SK …. SK …. (dit dit) ….